Electronic displays are commonly used to portray data in forms of visual text and/or images. The displays enable users to interpret and/or act upon the data. One advantage to electronic displays is that they enable users to visualize a desired end product. Such systems, however, typically only provide a user with pre-defined layouts. The user may select a pre-defined layout to use as a basis for a desired display. Generally, the pre-defined layouts consist of a grid-like display that is evenly divided into a number of equally sized cells. For example, the pre-defined layouts may include a single, large cell, two (2) cells, four (4) cells, nine (9) cells or sixteen (16) cells. The cells in each layout having more than one (1) cell are the same size. The user may then select a desired input source, image, text or other for each cell in the pre-defined layout.
The user, however, is limited to the pre-defined layouts provided by a particular application. The user is unable to customize the pre-defined layouts by, for example, varying a number and/or size of cells provided in the pre-defined layout. If a user desires a layout different from a pre-defined layout, a user-defined layout must be coded into the application. This does not enable a user to modify the layout. This must be done on an administrator or programmer level.
Typically, creating a new video display on existing systems requires a software engineer to write new code to develop graphical elements of the display and perform testing, a process taking several days. Additionally, icons need to be created using a drawing program and placed into an application. Additional code is needed for the icon to appear in a menu. This time consuming process would need to be repeated whenever an additional video display is requested. Users requiring new displays must obtain and install either a new version of an application or a service pack to add the additional features.
Additionally, some applications generate icons to represent the user-defined layout created. The icons may be given a name designated by the user. These icons, however, are typically generic icons that do not resemble the user-defined layout created. The icons are a standard image or graphic that is assigned to all user-defined layouts. Thus, the only distinguishing characteristic of the icons is the name designated by the user which typically does not meaningfully describe a layout.
These and other drawbacks exist.